Monday, August 31, 2009

What an appalling and a ridiculous question, "'Why is the African Continent poor - Is it because it hasn't produced world class philosophers?'"

What is the definition of a philosopher and in whose terms should we define this when we go for benchmarking? Where on earth do people get these kinds of questions from and where do these people live? Are they writing simply to make a buck or two or perhaps they write such question 2 o'clock in the morning after some booze?

Liberation of any form or shape, and for that matter genuine liberation starts from self, from within. Once you have conquered and reconciled the inner injustices and the fears, then only one can stand tall and bold and face any others outside self.

The tendency to address serious subjects in generalization always ends up with significant prejudices, misinformation, assumptions and mostly misleading and the eventual outcome will certainly be an output for efforts that have avoided the real underlying questions.

Rather than getting into the bandwagon of apportioning blames amongst us (as if there weren't enough to go around), our generation should embark on and actively embrace self-liberation and helping each other to progress and liberate one another, as people. That is important. The psychological and impact and burden imposed in Africa and on Africans, is not to be underestimated.

For example, I am equally appalled when I read or hear from some of our people and some of our so called leaders, vigorously embracing the very structures that destroyed the African fabric many, many years ago, such as the 1885 Berlin Conference and vehemently spitting at our very own small innovative survival unities and strategies such as the Tanzanian Union of Zanzibar and Tanganyika.

Further more, when I read from our learned Africans using terminologies like "Black" Africans (as in the attached video clips), knowingly or unknowingly the reference is always to the equation or comparison of or with "White" or Europe, as if it were some kind of a benchmark! What we fail to understand is that, in the context of accepting and buying into the so called "Black" or "White", the ground for any serious discussion is already intrinsically lost, favourably to the Architects who enjoys the status quo, as one of the main historical Black and White injustices. Remember to the eyes of the Architects of these kinds of segregations and politics, anything "Black" is assumed or rather by default expected to justify or defend the existence of literally anything therein or connected to;

While I am conscious that fundamental questions have to be asked and solutions sought without digressing, I still believe, fundamentally we as Africans, we ourselves must always rejects any connotations that places us in pigeon boxes. Our words and deeds must match. When we preach Unity, we must be working towards that UNITY, when we express our abhorrence on racism and linked injustices, we must refuse to call ourselves "Blacks" as there is no such thing as a "Black" person and so there is no such a thing as "Black" History. These references were created to place our societies in a particular ranked place within the politics of the world! These are labels and cages and we still use them in our very own researches, education, writings, and findings etc, effectively deeply ingrained in us!!

Back to the core subject today, based on a provocative question by the author within the topic/discussion thread "Why is the African Continent poor?":

If you read or perhaps for some if you reflect (more so for those who have experienced directly), you will agree that, the colonies did not develop their colonies with the aim of developing the people for the people. When our first generations of leaders post Independence came to the realms of political power for home rule, the likes of Julius Kambarage Nyerere, their first aim was to allow people development. Excellent intentions and very good ground was laid down, and I dare say for a country like Tanzania, those foundations and the wisdom used in those days is what still sustains us as a nation to where we are today, albeit existing and ongoing challenges.

With consequent Tanzania governments, BIG mistakes were done to abolish MIIKO YA VIONGOZI (IMHO, in terms of genuine National interests, this was one of the most foolish and most stupid mistake committed I may add – and we as people allowed it to go ahead), and from those changes, from those moments, we have seen the trend and the outcome, I need not dwell into this, we all know what is going on in the country right now with all the endless scandals and no concrete punitive example setting redress or resolution to-date! Leaders are now openly keen to enrich themselves with riches they will never, I mean NEVER be able to FULLY & LEGALLY account for – to the standards that will be accepted in the public eye, and this is all done at the expense of the interests of the Public Office, where a leader/representative/public servant has been entrusted by the population to only be their keeper & or captain!

Sadly, all these corrupts practices are generally accepted in daylight and obviously known all over as everything is in the public domain! What we say is not what we do! Annoyingly, the rest of the significant part of the elite with interest in future leadership, all they do whiles out of power is plotting and plodding in the direction for an opportunity for their turn to do like their predecessors EVEN 10 or 100 times as BAD! While this is going on, in the streets and in various evening discussions at the bars, in buses, in stations, in the kitchen table, living rooms, online public forums etc, it is not unusual to hear credits given to those who managed to squander significant sums and dubious wealth within the shortest period while in the Public Office!

Those who play by the book or are keen to do so or perhaps likely to defend that position, are usually deemed as unworthy or unfit (wamelemaa, hawana mpango, hawafi kuwa viongozi n.k) or allegedly do not know how politics (with a small p) works; that they are naive and not realistic, and that if and when they get into the office, they will simply do the same or even worse!! Such statements and thinking shows what is on ones mind, and there goes no surprise what gets achieved when such a thinking gets into a position to influence progressive change!

Some of the major reasons our country and at large our Africa is poorly managed (as we are certainly not poor), is because:

1. Individually many have not taken our own personal responsibilities to the fullest capacity - this includes but by all means not exhaustive: appreciating, owning and promoting our very own and original version of our own culture, sense of identity as Africans, our activism and participation in decisions that affects our daily lives as Individuals or collectively. I once saw a TV show, so-called expert teaching British audience ladies how to run their families for example. To me all the teachings were things that we in Africa have known for years and do them naturally, though some are these days busy killing them in the name of modernity! This again reminds me of those who feel it is great to shop for vegetables from a supermarket (processed food) as opposed to buying fresh from the market! Small things but there is a telling…

2. Individually and collectively, continuously and progressively, we've easily and readily embrace what others subscribe/impose/describes us as Africans, and this to me shows to what extent we have allowed & continue to allow the robbery – consciously and or subconsciously.

3. Where we have tried, we have not managed to get the organizing to effectively achieve the initial aims of the coming together or have failed to strategically plan for eventual sustained achievement for the benefit of many; instead, we've mostly collaborate in better terms with people from far lands at the expense of own brothers and sisters – our own neighbours. This was true 300 years ago and is true today! Whether 300 years ago gold was traded for guns to oppress own people or the new word of new God or today when we sign dubious contracts with our modern day "civilized" modern government or when we allow planes carrying weapons which end up to the bandits in the Congo! It is the same concept, exactly the same just done differently and in a different era!

Until Individuals within our societies starts

-To take personal responsibilities to the fullest (or even aim for) with appropriate suitable actions, and then

-Effectively organizing at the grass roots level and follow through all the way to the national level or African regional level

We will continue to put in our public offices our own leaders, in the majority of whom are a reflective of our communities in terms of what we allow or tend to allow, with "some understanding" and "tolerance"- giving ways to petty and grand corruption and accepting so called "town boy or girl mission" .

We must strive to achieve zero tolerance to all that we already know are bad things for us individually and collectively – excellent example corruption of any shape or form – grand or petty! Stop looking for excuses to pay traffic police those silly petty cash bribes; the same applies to medical personnel, ministry personnel when looking for your files, when getting your building permit, in courts, when chasing for your tenders, when applying for jobs, when applying for a business loan etc. We don't need to complicate the subject, we simply need to do what we know is right and acceptable, and strive to make the trend in that direction as a normality and not an exception.

And to that end, what we need as Africans is no more lectures and studies, but implementing the right and suitable actions, which we all know what is required. Actions that will yield strong Public Institutions that can stand the test of time and suitability. Strong Public Institutions and NOT personal efforts within weak Public Institutions geared towards forging to create unsubstantiated or non existent public benefits such as (to name a few) RADAR project, EPA, hiring helicopters for political campaigns – yote haya ni viini macho, nothing else!!

Institutions with people development as the main agenda, not just thinking of leaders and or leading!

Until when we genuinely put people first and ask ourselves the right or suitable appropriate questions, we will certainly get the right or suitable appropriate answers and the right or suitable appropriate actions and outcomes. Otherwise all we keep doing is allowing and creating a platform for breeding African rulers with their own elite agenda, in place of colonist or dictators who also had their own agenda – none includes people for people's benefit, and then we will keep asking why Africa is Poor!

Irrespective of who is the original author or architect of the question, charity starts at home. The home is self. Africa is indeed not poor but it is indeed poorly managed.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Dear Prodigal Son of the Soil, as painful as it might be to be African in a world whereby there is historical erasure and amnesia in regard to Africa, it is not that helpful to deliberately partake - by way of denialism - in writing off that history as if you fully know it. There are a number of documentations on how there has been a systematic distortion and erasure of what Africa has and is contributing to the world. Have you consulted all of them? Or you have just ended with the Egyptologists you are questioning? As I said to someone else in my earlier response to 'Africa has not produced world-class philosophers', not knowing is not an excuse. Don't tell me you have exhausted the history of Africa because if you had done so you wouldn't have said what you have said without even referring to any of the Africans/Africanists you are arguing against and disputing the evidence they have provided. You can quote and agree with Hegel because you have taken time to engage with him as if he is an authority on Africa's history. But have you taken time to deal with Africa's archives?

One can go on and on referencing but thats not the point. The main issue here is that we need to do away with this intellectual arrogance of presuming we know all that is supposed to be known about this Africa in relation to Euro-America while most of what we know or think we know is part and parcel of the Euro-American canon that belongs to what Edward Said aptly termed Orientalism. Why spend so much time with Hegel who never even set foot in Africa instead of doing what has been referred to as Exorcising Hegel's Ghost by studying about Africa - its past, present and future - in its own terms? Is it too hard for us to search for the unsung heroes/heroines of Africa and engage with what they said and/or wrote? Can't we go to Lake Turkana and study about one Sin Akuru Kuku Lubanga who lived around 2348 BCE and whom, it is said, "Emperor Urnamu of Ur in Mesopotamia sent Emissaries to consult him on matters relating to ethics, metaphysics and astronomy as these related to the perennial problems of human origins, security, survival and destiny" (Quoted from Gilbert E. M Ogutu's African Renaissance: A Third Millenium Challenge to Thought and Practice in African Philosophy)?

Once again let me invoke the spirit of Why I love-hate Euro-America as I end my response by juxtaposing a passage from a Professor of Psychiatry, who was also attempting to respond to that claim that Africa has not produced world class philosophers, with Chinua Achebe's 'Literary-Psychoanalysis':

"If you have lived in the West you know how passionate many people are to show that Africans are not up to it. I have often wondered why. I think that is the question. It is not due to ignorance, they would not be so passionate. What is it that they fear or envy? That would be more like it. The history of mankind is the rise of one people and their decline followed by other people. Where are the Babylonians, Phoenicians, Greek and Romans of yesteryears? Africa day of glory has been and will come again! There was a time the Romans were not thought highly by the Greek, and the Romans in turn thought the British were unteachable" - Prof. Gad P. Kilonzo

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Ozodi Thomas Osuji's INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSPHY is an interesting initiative, albeit heavily laden with intellectual arrogance. I find this line from that 'Free' "Philosophy 101" particularly problematic: "Africa has not produced world class philosophers, at any rate, I do not know of any to review". Not knowing them is not an excuse. Unless 'world = west'. If this is not so and if that is not the truncated Africa of Hegel then one can start with Ibn Khaldun at http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/klf.htm. Then you can move to Hegel's so-called 'Africa' proper by looking at Anton-Wilhelm Almo. This is how he is described by two renowned (African) philosophers:

"Antony Wilhelm was originally a black Ghanaian. But he lived in and studied in Germany from the age of 4 until the age of about 50 where he lectured and wrote his philosophical texts some years before Emmanuel Kant was known." - H. Odera Oruka on 'Claude Sumner as an African Philosopher' in Claude Sumner's 'Living Springs of Wisdom and Philosophy - Volume 1: Problematics of an African Philosophy'

"Amo's philosophical career took place principally in Germany, where he received a training that he in turn was destined to dispense as a teacher in the universities of Halle, Wittenberg and Jena between the years 1730 and 1740, before returning to his home country where he died. His work is almost entirely written in Latin. These are the main titles: Dissertatio inauguralis de jure Maurorum in Europa (The Rights of Africans in Europe), 1729 (this text is lost) [Ask yourself why?]; Dissertatio de humanae mentis apatheia (On the impassivity of the Human Mind), 1734, Tractatus de arte sobrie et accurate philosophandi (On the Art of Philosophizing with Sobriety and Accuracy), 1738 (this is Amo's most important text and runs to 208 pages). An English translation of these works was published in 1968 by the English Department of the Martin Luther University of Halle, under the title Antonius Gulielmus Amo Afer of Axim in Ghana, Translation of his Works " - Paulin J. Hountondji on 'African Philosophy: Myth and Reality'

When you are done with Amo you can move to Cheick Anta Diop at http://africawithin.com/diop/diop_bio1.htm. Of course one may not agree that he is 'world class' if to him/her the 'world' is defined by Western/Euro-American standards. Indeed those are the very standards that questioned his doctoral thesis, nay, theses. Now I know one might argue that these were historians, not philosophers. But, then, isn't Hegel's 'Philosophy of History' philosophy?

Friday, August 7, 2009

It is indeed a hot seat. They say it was especially set up for someone who never sat, nay, stood, on it. Indeed little did the current Prime Minister know, then, that he will be its first victim.

Of course I am talking of the impromptu questions and answers’ parliamentary sessions with the PM on Thursdays. Many a times the Premier has come out of them unscathed. But there is one particular matter that tends to put him on the spot: ‘The Zanzibar Question.’

Not so long ago the PM ignited a national debate when he seemed to claim that ‘Zanzibar is not a country.’ This time around, in his usual frankness, he has expressed a controversial wish. ‘God willing’, said he, ‘I would like to see Tanzania run by a single government instead of two.’

Expectedly, this statement has sparked yet another national debate on ‘The Union Question’. “Several Zanzibar politicians”, noted The Citizen of 1 August 2009, “denounced Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda’s remark.” One of them even insisted that the PM should withdraw his statement.

In an interview with BBC Africa, Prof. Abdallah Safari observed how reluctant we have been in dealing squarely with genuine grievances particularly in regard to Zanzibar’s identity and autonomy. It is this tendency to beat around the bush that renders ‘Kero the Muungano’, that is, ‘Union Grievances’, a never ending issue. It’s about time now that we take the bull by its horns.

But where do we start? With the vision(s) that informed the founding fathers of the Union, that is, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere and Sheikh Abeid Amani Karume? Or, by way of referenda, should we go to the people of the then Tanganyika and Zanzibar, that is, Tanzanians?

If we start with the former then we have to understand what end was justified by the means in which the ‘Articles of Union between the Republic of Tanganyika and the People’s Republic of Zanzibar’ were signed in 1964. Surely the quest for African Unity or Pan-Africanism was a motivating factor. But, in an ulterior sense, it was not the primary one.

To Karume, as Prof. B. P. Srivastava notes in ‘The Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania 1977–Some Salient Features-Some Riddles’, the Union was mainly “motivated by the instinct of political self-preservation” as it brought strength to Zanzibar and protected them from external enemies of the Revolution.

In the case of Nyerere who had then just survived an army mutiny, the Union was mostly motivated by the need to protect Tanganyika from an impending Communist threat in its doorstep. Way back before independence he was quoted as saying that Zanzibar is “very vulnerable to outside influences” and thus confessed: “I fear it will be a big headache for me.”

Many years later he admitted that the “Act of Union” was “an emergency act.” It is not surprising then that this is the same Nyerere who became a fiery critic of those Members of Parliament, famously known as G55, who came up with a resolution, demanding a government of Tanganyika. What he wrote afterwards can help us move beyond the current Union structure.

In his book on ‘Our Leadership and the Destiny of Tanzania’, Nyerere affirms that we could have adopted a merger with one government or a federation with three governments. “But”, he insists, “we felt unable to do so because of the small size of Zanzibar relative to that of Tanganyika.” The latter setup, he asserts, “would have been too costly for Tanganyika” But why? Because it “would contribute the vast bulk of the costs for running” it on top of its own.

Why then didn’t we opt for what the current PM wish? Nyerere’s answer is as significant today as it was then: “A Union with One Government would give the impression that Tanganyika had swallowed up Zanzibar. We had been fighting for the Independence and Unity of Africa; we did not want it to be thought, even erroneously, that we were introducing a new form of imperialism.”

He thus concludes his answer: “For that reason I opposed a One Government structure.” Surely the PM who happened to be a protégé of Nyerere could have not missed that. Who then inspired his wish for a one government? Ironically, it must be this same mentor of his. To Nyerere, a one government setup remained an option. But a three-government setup was always a nonstarter.

Thus Nyerere’s poetic book ‘Tanzania! Tanzania!’ is primarily a passionate argument about why the Union will collapse if we form a federation with three governments. Therein he insists that if we really have to change it then let us change it to a one government Union. This might have been the ultimate goal that he had in mind all along.

It may be true that “the founder of the Union”, as Dr. Sengondo Mvungi recalls in The Citizen cited above, “had said that the two governments was merely a transitional stage toward a single government.” But why then have we witnessed a lot of high level reservations over the years toward the increase of Union matters in the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania?

Indeed those matters have constitutionally doubled from the original 11 in the Articles of Union. To make matters worse, as Prof. Abdul Sherrif and Ismail Jussa observes in their chapter on ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Backwards: The State of Constitutionalism in Zanzibar-2007’, out of the 17 areas covered by the East Africa Community Treaty only 4 are Union matters!

In that regard the other 13 areas fall within the jurisdiction of the revolutionary government. Yet its representation in the fast-tracking of the East African Federation is as ambiguous. No wonder, as the two authors note, “a question that was raised repeatedly by the people of Zanzibar during the Wangwe Commission public hearings was one related to the fact that the Union government had assumed powers that are exclusively under the jurisdiction of the Zanzibar government."

If we don’t deal squarely with these reservations they will surely pile up and explode. Perhaps in the spirit of the Nyalali Commission there is a need to hold a referendum. What do people want?

Karibu kwenye ulingo wa kutafakari kuhusu tunapotoka,tulipo,tuendako na namna ambavyo tutafika huko tuendako/Welcome to a platform for reflecting on where we are coming from, where we are, where we are going and how we will get there